Incidentally, I have indulged in nothing American today. My focus has been on German and Japanese music. As probably none of you know, I have a thing for creative blends of complex and simple things. If it helps you understand, my two favorite types or music are baroque and techno - one is usually intellectual, while the other is usually visceral. As a result, these two genres or music are practically incompatible. Here's one of the very rare exceptions I've found:
Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings remixed by DJ Tiesto.
The classical chord progression is not something you would ever hear in techno music but it's easy to follow, loops well, and resolves to the tonic note, making it perfect for a techno remix. The genius is not in the song itself, but in Tiesto's ability to recognize what made Barber's piece exploitable.
Now let's go an a journey and actually do a remix of our own.
Here's the opening for Neon Genesis Evangelion, an enormously popular but otherwise mediocre anime.
This song is called A Cruel Angel's Thesis:
For a theme song, this is actually pretty good. The chords progress in some unexpected ways in the verses which help it sound unique, but it still implements plenty of musical tricks common to popular western music which makes the sound simple and predictable enough to be accessible to a young and modern demographic.
But wait...Here's George Frideric Handel's Passacaglia:
OMG! It's the Evangelion chorus written 300 years in advance!
Like techno and classical music, the fan base of anime generally does not overlap with the fan base of baroque composers. In other words, if you've heard one of these songs, you probably have not heard the other one. These are the gaps that I absolutely love to see bridged. Unlike techno and classical however, these two songs are not inherently incompatible (because they are almost the same song). So let's be pioneers and unite disparate audiences.
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Done! I've blended Eri Kawai's a capella version of A Cruel Angel's Thesis with a low-tempo, piano version of Handel's Passacaglia:My point here that all things overlap somewhere, even if the overlaps are as rare as with techno and classical music. It's the exploitation of these overlaps in art that I personally find very interesting whether in music or any other creative form. The two songs I just combined were already very similar but the principle is the same as in Tiesto's remix or Barber's Adagio: hunt for the elusive overlaps and then....
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